I have a lot of experiences with cooking but none whatsoever with freezing the food to keep it..Now, since I am trying to cut down on food waste, need to cook in bigger bulk and also save time I will need for school, I really do not know what food freezes well?

Any ideas anyone with what to freeze? What are good and not too complicated recipes for freezer cooking? I would love to store approz 5 dinners for a week or two. I made bolognese sause and froze the remaining half this week, it kept really well, just made fresh pasta to it.

I read somewhere that dairy and food with big water content does not really freeze so well, but I know nothing about how vegies freeze, etc. meat or local products. I can imagine goulash would also freeze well..Please, chefs, help

I make a homemade tomato sauce in a big pan and freeze the rest in little tubs that i don`t use very simple to make and very yummy if you want i can give you the receipe

I freeze everything except Veg. Spag Bol,curries,soups tomato sauce. Meat that we have bought on Aktion (special offer). Hope this helps.

You'll doubtless get lots of other tips, but for me, one of the first lessons was to remember that you cannot 'get the stuff apart' when it is frozen together. Smaller portions are better as they are much quicker to thaw.

I'd buy a book with basic tips if I were you. Veg needs to be blanched and you need to know for how long, for the best results. Even if folk on here tell you details of all this, you're going to have to write it down or copy and paste, as you'll never remember everything everyone wrote.

Menu suggestions from EFers will be more helpful! I'm keeping an eye on this Thread!

I've never heard that about dairy stuff.
I freeze butter.
I freeze Fondue Cheese.
I freeze Mozzarella.
I even freeze milk (pasturised semi skimmed - in those white 'plastic' bottles. Allow to thaw at room temperature or in cold water for a couple of hours then into the fridge to 'finish' off. (You can use some of it before the last bit has melted! )

I freeze small home-made pizza. Cook the sauce and put it, together with the mozzarella cheese and fish/olives/whatever, onto the raw dough. Bake them straight from the deep-freeze. Perfect after a hike.

If I buy chicken joints 'in bulk', I always cook them with veg, before I freeze them. They take forever and a day to thaw and if you want to cook them soon afterwards it's difficult to be sure that they are really done right through. Salmonella danger!
I freeze them in portions.

One last bit of advice - LABEL EVERYTHING CLEARLY - Also with size and number of portions.
You'll put stuff into the freezer - yeah I know what that is.
Well, you'll forget!

There is a good section on the Delia Smith website (a famous British cook) - http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-co...ng-advice.html

It also recommends which books to buy.

can't freeze dairy products???

So what do you do with your ice cream ???

Often fresh produce has on the packaging if it can be frozen or not.

Bolagnase sauce, soups etc... freeze well. But as suggested freeze in meal size portions (or family portions depending on your needs/intentions).

have a google on the subject: freezing food.

Here is one site that looks good.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FactSheets/...zing/index.asp

...among the list of dairy products I freeze, I didn't even think of that.
Go to the top of the class!

http://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&q=...q=5&oq=freezer+

Food that is great to freeze and easy to make in bulk...

• Indian food (currys)
• Chinese food (currys, sweet and sour etc)
• Spaghetti Bolognaise
• Mexican Chilli
• Stews

Basically anything that has a sauce is ideal for freezing.

With regards to meat, almost anything will freeze and keep for a month or two... beef, pork and lamb tend to fare better than fish and chicken when frozen from fresh.

With vegetables I wouldn't bother freezing them to save... just buy fresh each time you make a meal, they will taste much better.

I often make up to 6 lasangas at a time. They sell smaller disposable containers at migros which are perfect for 4 or 5 servings each. I also find that if you buy the club packs of ground meat at coop it is much cheaper as well. I also do vegtables ones.
A chef friend of mine once told me once to wrap the lasanga in tinfoil and then put it in a plastic bag and so far it works wonders......... I have left them in the freezer for up to 2 or 3 months.

Thanks to all! Yeah, the dairy must freeze ok, I didn't think of icecream ..

I think I got a bit careful since what I have frozen before did not taste so ok when thawed, but I should just get a freezer thermometer and check what the temp actually is.

I also didn't realize it is better to thaw overnight in a fridge section, I would nuke it in microwave and then eat it so it seems not a good idea to skip the slow thawing..

The freezer odours we used to get in all the freezer foods as kids also bring memories, mom would do stuffed peppers and all the icecream would taste like it after a while . We didn't eat icecream quickly, obviously, haha.

So far past few days I have stuck there tomato soup with little dumplings, veg curry and bolognese sauce so I will see how it keeps. So far so good ! I will use the veg curry as a base for slow meat baking, I just buy fresh chicken breasts and put all in a semi-deep oven dish with a bit of creme fraiche and some freshly ground curry spice on top.

Making a big pot of stock is also really good, then you can freeze it in smaller portions ready to use for soups, stews, etc...

I love freezing stuff, so quick and easy when you're too lazy to make a meal from scratch

I have frozen things like curries, coq au vin, boeuf bourgignon, poulet riesling, everything in small 1-serve portions. My parents freeze a lot of meat, also bay leaves, chillis, lemongrass and hardy herbs I think do well in the freezer.

Also does anybody else keep bread in the freezer??

Great tip Penelope. One suggestion, instead of freezing Stock which can be bulky and take a lot of space in your freezer, I reduce the stock on medium heat until only a couple of cups remain and it's become almost like a syrup. This could take a couple of hours. It's an easy way of making a demi glace. Then pour on to an ice tray, and freeze into cubes. Keep the cubes in a zip loc bag. Whenever you want to use stock, add one or more of the cubes to the pot diluted with water to taste.

I freeze bread quite often, but only the traditional white sandwich bread kind. When microwaved in the wrapping that it came in, it comes out great and saves a trip to the supermarket during emergencies. Not sure about freezing crusty European breads.

Sure. I make my own dough (mostly flour from Landi -super mixtures), bake it in bread tins, when it is cold I cut the loaves in half, put into freezer bags, seal and freeze. Part of the dough I make into rolls - useful for hiking; I also bake a flatter loaf which is ideal for fondue as it has a lot of crust.

Doing this, I don't have to worry about buying bread if we go off early in the morning for the whole day and as I make my Zöpfe too, there's no problem with a Zopf for Sunday morning either.

Off Topic - Mind you, convenience wasn't the reason for starting the habit. The village baker used to offer my child a sweet whenever we bought bread. My daughter starting asking for a sweet as soon as we entered the shop. I didn't like it. So I start baking my own bread to avoid going there. And although this happened in about 1978... I simply never lost the habit.

PS - with the aid of a microwave, a loaf is thawed in two to three minutes. Normally, I fetch one out of the deep freeze in the evening and it is thawed by morning.

Freezing reduced stock is a genius idea, I will do that, I do cook with veg Knorr stock (w/o the msg, not too bad) but do not really like the taste of it. The real deal is so much better. Thanks!

What is Zopf? It sounds tasty. Longbyt, do you bake in your oven or do you have special bread maker? Do you sprinkle it with some seeds? Where does one buy the poppy, linen, sesame, sunflower and pumkin seeds? I would like to learn how to bake in normal oven, mom does it really well but she uses a bread dough mix (wholewheat) she buys back home. Maybe I just should import that...We have no Landi here, or at least I have not seen it around.

I completely understand your anti candy ways, I am going through it right now, trying to minimize my kid's cavities while not killing my kid's appetite, I bake a lot of cakes, etc since her weight is a weight of a 1yr younger kid (she is 2,5). I need to bake bread, rolls and buns instead. I love baking...Makes a home smell like real home.

I suggest you look up Jack’s instructions for making Zopf. Me, I never stick to any rules.

When we lived in a village in Aargau, I used to fetch Zopf flour from the mill but when we moved to England I couldn’t get it and started using ‘strong flour’. Now I usually I use half white flour and half ruch mehl. (High ash flour? – that’s what it said when I looked it up!!) . I never put any sugar in and I often use my yeast frozen. I don’t even bother to thaw it. Will horrify the purists, but it works OK. I just put it into the bowl with the milk and butter before mixing it all with the flour.

I once forgot the yeast completely. When I noticed that the dough wasn’t rising and realised why, I melted the yeast with a little warm water, added it to the mixture with a bit more flour, and you couldn’t tell the difference when it was cooked. But don’t warm the milk too much or it will kill the yeast! (and if you do kill it, put another portion in – it tastes a little bit yeasty when cooked, but is absolutely OK). The only thing you really mustn’t forget is the salt!

For normal bread, I make the dough by hand (wonderful for letting of excess energy and/or frustration). I usually make about 3 kilos of flour at the same time. Or perhaps 2x2kg in two batches of two different sorts. I can get four bread tins onto each of two baking sheets. I often move them round at about ten minute intervals as the tins are very close together and I think perhaps the ‘inside’ will not be ‘done’ as soon as the ‘outer sides’ are. I put seeds into and/or onto them. The Reformhaus or Bio Shop will have various varieties, but sometimes I even buy them in the Migros. In ours they are near the breakfast cereals.

I honestly don’t think that buying a bread mixture makes it very much easier, so I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s just convenient to have seeds already in it, or to be able to choose a nice malty flour mixture.

Go on, try it.

PS – if you want to freeze yeast but intend to make up less than a kilo of flour at a time, cut it up before you freeze it. You can hack it apart still frozen but it’s more difficult and if you thaw it to cut it, it doesn’t go back to the original texture but turns ‘runny’. Usable but messy!

In pumpkin season, I usually cook a big pot of pumpkin soup and separate it into small potion to freeze. Easy and simple...

One thing I really dislike from the freezer is boiled spuds. If I make a large meat or chicken stew I always put just enough potato's in whole for the first serving. I freeze portions of the remaining stew and make the potatoes fresh to serve with it.

MusicChick, this is a very good and easy bread recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mama-Ds...ad/Detail.aspx

And this is for yummy cinammon rolls:
http://www.recipezaar.com/Sweet-Rolls-347797

hello everyone,
sorry for cross posting...but i do have one question related to this 'freezer food'.i used to buy bulk quantities of meat (chicken,beef etc) and used to freeze it,later on when i have time i used to make currys with that meat and if thats left over after eating, is it safe to again keep that cooked meat in freezer?